Sex and Disease: A Historical Perspective

There is a scene in the film Blood Diamond (2006) in which Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Danny Archer, attempts to explain the roots of the ‘African Crisis’ to a newly-arrived American journalist played by Jennifer Connelly. Archer sums up the situation with a pithy acronym, ‘TIA’ — ‘this is Africa’. The implication is that Africa is somehow both unknowable and inexplicable; a continent in which the normal ‘rules’ do not apply. It is due to the pernicious spread of this view across much of the developed world that a degree of ennui has crept into people’s perceptions of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa. HIV/AIDS is often treated as though it is without precedent, that it is unique in terms of African development; a disease lying outside the realms of historical context. There has also been an increased tendency on the part of policymakers to identify what makes Africa, and Africans, ‘different’ where HIV/AIDS is concerned. This chapter will address these trends, locate the disease within the broader ‘African Crisis’ and place HIV/AIDS within an appropriate historical context.